It's somewhat jarring, at first, to see a Palestinian rapper bustin' out a rhyme amid bombed-out rubble ("paralyzed, my life has ended, my plans erased," sings Ramallah Underground in their song, "Under the Ruins") or a tattoo-ridden, leather-wearing German skinhead rapping about economic conditions in the former East Berlin.

Joshua Atesh Litle's "The Furious Force of Rhymes" takes us around the world, but the San Francisco-born filmmaker is glad to finally be home for the Bay Area premiere.

"I felt there was something significant happening on the world stage that hadn't been addressed," Litle said. "This art form that had started out in the inner cities of the United States suddenly spread all over the world. Of course, rock 'n' roll and jazz started in the U.S. and went all over the world. But this is different because it became more political, in terms of the way people used it."

The film closes the three-day Oakland Underground Film Festival at NIMBY, a DIY industrial arts space near the Coliseum.

Now in its third year, the festival opens tonight at the Grand Lake Theater with a screening of "Yelling to the Sky," a high school coming-of-age story starring Gabourey Sidibe ("Precious").

Litle is a fan of rap, which began on the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s. He said he became aware of international cultures' embrace of rap when he saw the 1995 French independent film "La Haine," in which a Jew, an African and an Arab embrace hip-hop culture as a response to their social marginalization.

Litle, whose apocalyptic San Francisco film "Ever Since the World Ended" won the Audience Award at S.F. IndieFest in 2001, began logging his frequent-flier miles for "The Furious Force of Rhymes" in 2002; he got some of his budget from a French film company, and "The Furious Force of Rhymes" premiered at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. It debuted in the States this year at the South by Southwest festival.

"Not surprisingly, rappers like to talk and are opinionated," laughed Litle over lunch in San Francisco. "People who are using it around the world actually share (disadvantaged) social conditions. It has a social message to it. ... They're sharing the same kind of social conditions among American blacks in the States."

Litle's film, which will also play at DocFest in San Francisco next month, is the prelude to the festival's free closing-night party, also at NIMBY, with hip-hop bands Punk Funk Mob and Oakland Faders, with a projectionist jam by Illuminated Corridor Department of Public Works.